Illinois Trustees Reconsider Ban
on Unattended Minors
The board of the Bedford Park (Ill.) Library District assured a group of disgruntled parents August 14 that it would reconsider a year-old policy barring visitors under 16 after 3 p.m. unless they are cardholders, students of the nearby Walker Elementary School, or accompanied by someone 18 or older. “We didn’t come up with the policy overnight,” board Vice-president Jim Janchenko explained, citing the “thousands of dollars in damage” minors caused there before the policy was implemented.
According to the August 15 Chicago Daily Southtown, trustees resorted to the restriction after staffers were unable to catch the vandals red-handed and rejected adding security guards or surveillance cameras. The policy mostly impacts children from the adjoining town of Bridgeview, which is outside the library’s service area and where the suspected vandals reside.
Ironically, a policy similar to Bedford Park’s is being considered by the Pauline Haass Public Library in Sussex, Wisconsin, where a father recently accused the staff of negligence for not supervising his unattended 8-year-old daughter, who walked home after he left her there, the August 8 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Posted August 21, 2000.
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